I initially became interested in timelapse work after seeing the film Baraka years ago. While I don’t think I will be shooting timelapse work on 70mm film with Philip Glass scores, I do love to experiment and work toward shooting long term timelapses over several days, up to months. I’ve started to build a small GoPro rig that I will be able to secure in remote areas. Here’s the start of the build and test footage, be sure to change the quality settings to 4k.

The timelapse rig is built into a Pelican 1120 case. I used a drill press to cut a circle the same size as a GoPro lens filter and then used epoxy to glue the filter in place. I’m using an older GoPro Hero +3 B as my camera, connected to a scheduler that plugs directly into the back of the gopro. The scheduler will eventually be programmed to turn the camera on at sunrise and off at sunset to conserve battery for longer projects. I’m currently using a cellphone power pack to keep the camera running longer than an hour.

The next steps in the project are a custom 18650 lithium-ion battery array, and a secure mounting system. As you can tell bungee cords, a bike lock and mastercraft lock on the case will only work for short tests. Stay tuned.